my colleague from the great state of michigan to join us, mr. curson is a new member, came in during a special election. welcome. delighted to have you join us. mr. curson: thank you. i agree wholeheartedly with what's been said so far and the testimony, what i really want to say -- into the mic. what i really want to say is medicare is run more efficiently than nearly any insurance company in the world. they devote less than 2% of its funding to administrative expenses, and you compare that to a private insurance company that costs up to 40% of premiums for individuals and small group plans for administration and to pay their executives six and seven-figure salaries to do the same thing that'sed a minute straighted by -- that's administered by medicare officials. and the attempts to move medicare eligibility from 65 to 67 sounds like an easy fix. well, not only, as was spoken earlier, the recipients, those people that are 64, 65, 66 going into that category are people that possibly are already struggling, lost their jobs. they need that health care. they have a pre-existing conditio
